


Lightning & Comets

by coffeecakecafe



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Electric Core AU, Gen, I did bump the kids up to 16, Mysticism, also basically everyone but I'll add more specific character tags as they become relevant, and eventual violence, but if they pop up I'll add the tags for them, ghost science, teen for mild language, there are no ships in here yet, villainous mentor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21637114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeecakecafe/pseuds/coffeecakecafe
Summary: All Danny wants to do is make it through high school and into space, but he'll admit that being mostly dead has thrown a wrench into his plans. When Plasmius offers to help him navigate his ghost powers, he's both relieved and excited; surely a little help never hurt anyone? All the other ghost is asking for is some help on a project of his own...A season one rewrite with a little of season two thrown in.
Comments: 82
Kudos: 335





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> hey folks! this is the first fic I've written in an age and a half but it's something I've had in the works for a while. I started this project for wrimo 2019 and you can follow the tag for it on my tumblr for art and updates! links will be at the bottom
> 
> my goal is to update every other week :)

Danny thinks he’s maybe gotten about six hours of sleep - total - since the giant _meat ghost_ attacked school last week.

Maybe.

He’s pretty sure that has something to do with why he’s just failed a biology paper. It tracks, he thinks. The failed paper is why he’d just spent three hours at the Amity Park Zoo on a Tuesday evening - they’ve got a new polar bear cub, and Mr. Falluca wants him to write a paper, and he’s supposed to have been learning about conservation and extreme habitats and climate change.

_Supposed to_ being the operative phrase, as mainly he’d just been fighting a big metal robot ghost that kept declaring his intention to use Danny’s flesh as a new area rug. Or something. Skulker. That was it. It had been a close call, too. Danny only got away because the tiger in the habitat that Skulker threw him into had decided that the Ghost Zone’s ‘greatest hunter’ was more of a threat than the teenager he had launched into her dinner. Skulker had been forced to retreat and regroup, although he did steal Tucker’s phone on his way out.

Really, honestly, Danny has no idea why a ghost would need a smart phone. He doubts the Zone even gets Wi-Fi.

Danny is, therefore, understandably exhausted when he walks in through his front door to find that all of the lights in the house are out. His eyes quickly begin adjusting to the darkness (still weird!) and he sees the group gathered around the kitchen table, lit only by dim flashlights as they speak grimly to a couple of terrible-looking porcelain clown dolls.

The EVP meters set up in front of the dolls go absolutely wild the moment Danny is within range. This is normal; no one has been able to use an EVP in FentonWorks since the Accident. Danny always sets them off. The sharp gasp following the activity is actually what alerts him to the presence of two strangers in his home, sitting on the far side of the table, barely visible behind the bulk of his dad. As his eyes finish acclimating to the dark, he spots Jazz sitting on the countertop at the other end of the kitchen; she seems to be observing the proceedings with her usual degree of skepticism. 

Maddie scrambles to turn off the buzzing meters, and the one of the strangers begins typing something on her phone. Ah, thinks Danny. They’re that kind of guest. He wonders if they brought their own haunted dolls or if he’d somehow blocked this latest package delivery from his memory. Usually his parents show off their newest acquisitions over dinner, unless they’re too busy down in the lab.

“Evening,” Danny says, slowly. He avoids making eye contact with the clowns.

“Hi, sweetie,” Maddie greets. “How was the zoo?”

For a second, he wants to tell them that there was a ghost at the zoo and they missed it. He says: “It was fine. We saw the new polar bear cub, and I got some pictures. Whatcha up to?”

“We’re doing a little investigation,” Maddie explains. “Connie and Harriet are writing an article.”

“Hi,” says one of the strange women. She’s got her straight dark hair pulled back, and has her phone out to take notes on. “I’m Harriet Chin, nice to meet you. This is Connie Jones, my partner.”

“Hello,” Connie smiles. She has the fanciest camera Danny has ever seen in his life and a little bit of an English accent. “Pleased to meet you.”

Jack says, “Harry went to college with us back in the day! She’s doing a piece on our ghost collection, so we thought we’d run her through a session to set the mood.”

“Which, by the way, what was that just now? Those things went crazy!” Harriet exclaims. Danny hovers a ways back, near the bar between the kitchen and living room, while his mom continues to fiddle with the EVP meters.

“I’m afraid that’s just Dann-O,” his dad answers. “He had an… _accident_ … not too long ago and now he sets off the meters.”

“A ghost accident?” Connie asks with a level of sincerity that Danny rarely hears from non-family members using the word ‘ghost.’ She fixes her eyes on him as he starts to fidget, and he wonders if she can see his scars in this lighting.

“I, um - I got electrocuted,” Danny offers. “Down in the lab, so. I’ll head upstairs and let you get back to it. I have a paper to work on.”

Jazz hops down from the back counter, and Danny notices Harriet jump like she’d forgotten about the other teenager.

“At least take some dinner up with you,” Jazz says. She moves to get him something out of the fridge, bathing the weird little scene in warm incandescent light as she rummages through its inedible contents for something safe for human consumption. Danny hears the shutter of Connie’s camera go off.

His sister waves him over to help, and Danny concentrates very hard on Being Human in the direction of the terrible clown dolls as he enters the kitchen. He accepts the cold pizza Jazz passes him, and the drink, and does his best to ignore the tiny, tiny buzz of his ghost sense crackling in the back of his skull.

One of the flashlights blinks.

Danny gets less than three hours of sleep that night. He keeps dreaming that he can hear whispering, even though the dolls are two floors below him and the labs are below even that.

It’s lunch the next day before Danny can relay the events of his weird evening to Sam and Tucker - he’d dodged Dash earlier only to run into Skulker a second time, and then he’d missed the opportunity to find some research material at the library like he’d planned to do because the ghost used up the entire first half of his lunch break before whooshing mysteriously off to the tune of Tucker’s ringtone. Which was when Danny had noticed the phone embedded in the robot’s gauntlet.

“Why are your parents conducting _Ghost Adventures_ in your kitchen when there’s, like, a portal to the underworld in your basement?” Sam asks.

Danny shrugs, and answers around a hefty bite of his sandwich, “Dude Jazz still doesn’t think the Portal is a legit ghost thing.” He swallows. “I’m pretty sure she’s convinced it’s like a big dangerous glow stick that electrocutes people.”

“Maybe they’re building up to it,” Tucker suggests. He’s adjusting Danny’s schedule on an older phone Sam had brought him from home. “It makes sense, right? Leave the best thing for last.”

Classes pass uneventfully, but Skulker shows up at the library, and then at the zoo, and then at Tucker’s house while Danny is trying to draft his essay, and then _again_ at the Nasty Burger when they break for dinner. It’s almost like the ghost knows where they’re going to be next, even though Danny is actually _behind_ on his fancy study schedule thanks to having to stop and fight every step of the way. Weirder still is the fact that each time he shows up, Skulker comes terrifyingly close to actually succeeding in his quest to obtain Danny’s pelt, but he zooms off to the same ringtone jingle before he can finish the job.

“Ohhhhh,” Danny says, stopping dead in his tracks on the way out of the Nasty Burger.

“What?” ask Sam and Tucker, in unison.

“The schedule. Skulker’s on my schedule. He keeps showing up where we’re supposed to go.”

“Ohhhhh,” echoes Tucker. “My phone.”

“Oh my gosh we are so stupid,” Sam says. “That’s why he keeps leaving! He can’t break the schedule!”

And after a bit of groaning about how long it took them to catch on, they’ve hatched a plan. Tonight they’ll send Skulker on an around-the-world trip that ought to keep him busy until they’re ready to deal with him. After a little back-and-forth about the things they should force Skulker to do tonight, they’re fairly certain that they won’t have to deal with him until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest, giving them plenty of time to get some sleep and plan a trap.

Danny heads home with the hope of heading straight to bed and passing out for the next ten hours, but when he opens the front door he finds another lights out investigation has taken up residence in the living room.

The neon glow of the FentonWorks sign coming through the front windows means that Danny easily picks out the group huddled around the dolls, which they’ve neatly arranged on the coffee table and surrounded with an array of Fenton tech. The group has arranged themselves on the couches so that everyone is mostly facing the dolls, although Jazz is once again stationed further back, working on her laptop at the kitchen bar.

“Oh! Hello again, Danny,” greets Harriet.

“How’s your essay coming?” asks Jazz. “You’re home kind of late for a school night, you know.”

“It’s coming,” Danny answers. “Hi, Ms. Chin. Ms. Jones.”

“Please, Harriet is fine,” she says, at the same time that her partner says, “Call me Connie.”

His parents glanced up when he entered, but they seem to be fairly busy readying the gear they’d selected for the night. Maybe Tucker had been right about them scaling up to the Portal after all.

“Come check this out, son,” Jack holds up the device in his hand, excited. It’s some kind of tablet. “It’s the Fenton Ghost Gabber! This baby’ll translate anything the ghost wants to tell us into English.”

Danny drops his bag with a thump and creeps forward, shivering as his ghost sense sparks up the back of his neck again. One of these dolls has a ghost in it, but it’s probably not very strong. He wonders how long the ghost has been stuck in the human world, attached to a porcelain clown. Maddie smiles at him and pats the spot next to her on the couch, open between her and Jack.

He sits.

Jack clicks the Gabber on and places it between the dolls. Danny recognizes most of the other equipment: ecto power level detectors, a device that senses changes in local magnetism, a powerful infrared thermometer, and a couple of the other standard pieces his parents use for their research.

They sit in slightly tense quiet for a few moments. The Gabber emits a low white noise, and then - suddenly - a crescendo of static with a brief pop of a clear voice saying something that sounds a bit like “ort!” cuts through the quiet room.

“Oh my god,” Harriet whispers. “It wants out.”

Danny is pretty sure that the ghost is in the left doll, with the painted-on toothy grin. He can almost hear the rest of what it’s trying to say, like muttering in the back of his head just barely too soft to be understood.

His mom wraps a reassuring arm around him, sensing his distress. Danny wants to run.

“I should go,” he says.

“I should go,” the Gabber says, in Danny’s voice. He hears his dad suck in a sharp breath.

“I should go,” the Gabber says, not in Danny’s voice. “…lease…ort - I -”

Silence falls.

“Come on now, Spook,” Jack says, a little too loudly in the heavy quiet. “Don’t get cold feet on us now! Say something else!”

The group sits in the dark a while longer, but the Gabber only breathes static; soft, then loud, in, then out - Danny realizes, eventually, that the static is an echo of his own careful breathing, magnified through the device. He hopes desperately that his parents don’t make the same connection even as he’s pressed between them. He wants to suggest that they give up, but he knows that he’ll only be giving it more words.

It’s Jazz who rescues him in the end. After what feels like hours of staticky quiet, she stalks across the room to click the Gabber off.

“I think we’re done,” Jazz declares. “All it did was repeat ambient noise. Besides, I’m sure Danny has homework to do, right?”

Danny mumbles something close to “yeah, tons” and starts trying to extricate himself from the couch so he can retrieve his bag. Everyone winces when Jazz flips the lights back on, and then Danny makes his escape as Harriet and Connie lay into his parents with questions about the readouts on the various blinking gadgets.

Later, after the journalists have left and his parents have retreated to their room to get ready for bed, Danny creeps back downstairs - invisibly, this time. He picks up the doll with the toothy grin and the crackle of his ghost sense tells him he’s chosen correctly. He carries the doll down into the lab, and throws it into the Portal.

He sleeps like the dead that night. Jazz has to come upstairs and physically shake him awake for school the next morning and he’s the most well-rested he’s been in almost two weeks when he meets Sam and Tucker for first period (although he isn’t any closer to being done with his essay).

At lunch, they plan their trap.

The end of the school day finds them in the empty soccer field. Danny brought a couple ecto-guns from the lab for Sam and Tucker, who are stationed on either side of the bleachers. Danny stands in the middle of the field in his ghost form; he has the Thermos clipped into the belt loop of his jeans with one of his dad’s patented ghost-shaped FentonWorks D-rings. At 4:30 on the dot, when the football team is practicing on the other side of campus and the area is all but abandoned, they hear the whine of Skulker’s jet pack engine approaching. Danny blips into invisibility just as the ghost drops through the clouds, and Sam watches Skulker’s back as he raises his arm to check the phone.

“I know you’re here, Whelp,” Skulker rumbles. “I can feel your core. I’ve been around the world twice today, thanks to this damnable device, and I’d prefer to kill you quickly. Come out and fight!”

Tucker snickers, and when Skulker begins to turn toward the sound Danny blasts him in the back with an electrically charged ectoblast - only to watch the robot absorb the brunt of the electricity directly into his system.

Skulker begins to laugh, turning slowly towards Danny in spite of his invisibility, “You really don’t know anything, do you, child?”

Tucker fires his ecto-gun as soon as he has the shot, and when it hits the jet pack it practically _melts_ , leaving a clump of blackened metal lodged partway into the back of the suit. That enrages Skulker enough to whirl towards Tucker again with a roar, reaching for his gun - 

And Danny swoops in for a close range blast while Skulker’s back is turned and shouts, “Hey Terminator, eyes on the prize!”

Skulker’s one-eighty becomes a three-sixty as he throws his momentum into a heavy punch to Danny’s gut, forcing him out of invisibility as he flies backwards into the grass and rolls once, twice - and catches himself in midair just in time to see Sam pop around the bleachers and take aim, firing her ecto-gun at Skulker’s cannon as he lifts it in Tucker’s direction. 

Danny has only a split second to recover before he follows Sam’s shot with an ectoblast of his own, and the cannon explodes. Skulker’s hand is caught in the blast, and the outer layer of smooth metal falls away to reveal some of the skeletal steel underneath.

Skulker glowers, and the plates of his shoulders slide apart to allow missile launchers to rise up from within the suit.

“What is with you?!” Danny raises his glowing hands, preparing for another shot. “Just leave, we have you outnumbered!”

“You think your friends will be enough to save you, child? I will only return over and over again until I am at last victorious - I am the Ghost Zone’s _greatest_ hunter, and I will hunt down every last human in this city if that is what it takes to claim my prize,” Skulker turns back around to face Danny. He grins, wide and toothy and metal, as the launchers on his shoulders begin to rotate back around to face Danny’s friends. “I doubt it will take very long.”

“Hey, asshole!” Sam shouts, and fires a very good shot into the back of Skulker’s right knee. The robot tilts off balance, and the missiles fly a wide enough arc that Danny is able to blast them from the sky before they can find their targets. She fires again, hitting near one of the launchers, and this shot is followed quickly by a glancing blow from Tucker’s direction that does little more than catch Skulker’s eye, but that’s all the window they need.

Danny rockets towards Skulker, catching the distracted ghost with a whirling kick that knocks his robotic head clean off of his body and drives it hard into the turf at their feet.

There’s a moment of shocked silence while the trio takes in the empty robotic body before Tucker whispers, reverently, “This is just like FullMetal Alchemist.”

Before Danny or Sam can formulate a response to that, their attention is drawn to Skulker’s head - or, rather, Skulker himself - as a little green ghost struggles to pull himself out of the helmet.

“No way,” says Danny, one hand reaching to unclip the thermos as the other reaches to pull the tiny ghost free of the head. He grabs one of Skulker’s tiny kicking feet and yanks, and with a pop the little ghost is out. Sparks travel across the otherwise featureless surface of the green blob, causing Danny’s hand to tingle with a near identical sensation to that of his ghost sense climbing his spine.

“Whelp!” screams Tiny Skulker. “I will have your pelt for this! I will mount your head on my wall! I will use y-” the yelling fades as he’s sucked into the Thermos, followed closely by his suit.

Danny drops to the ground as the white rings of his transformation travel up and down his body, returning the color to his clothes and hair. He inspects the expansive grass stain that is now his entire outfit, and wrinkles his nose.

“I’ll buy you new clothes,” Sam offers offhandedly. “That was so cool! Way better than the meat lady - you know you’re not getting this ecto-gun back, right? Like, I am keeping this.”

“Have your parents not asked about the like thirty new outfits you’ve bought me in the last month?”

Sam shrugs. “I think they think I’m trying to help you feel better, after… y’know.”

Tucker passes his ecto-gun back to Danny, and adds, “Besides, dude, _you_ haven’t noticed that she’s only buying you stuff that turns black when you go ghost, so I somehow doubt anyone else is seeing any patterns here.”

Danny turns to Sam in confusion, and her shrug isn’t enough to distract from how smug she looks about it. “Hey, superheroes need costumes, right? Or at least a color scheme.”

He ends up digging a hoodie out of his school locker to wear over his ruined shirt. The librarian only raises her eyebrows at the state of his clothes once, and Danny spends some much-needed time working on his paper on the library computers. It’s his stomach that sends him home a few hours later, but he’s proud of the pages he’s written so far and figures he can finish up at home after dinner.

This time he returns to find the lights on. Jazz is in the living room, sprawled on the couch and reading some kind of psychology book.

“Hey,” he greets. “Did you guys eat already?”

“Ugh, no,” Jazz dog-ears her page and closes the book to look up at him. “Mom and Dad are showing Harriet and Connie around the Vaults and the labs and stuff. I tried to get them to like talk about the historic stuff, you know, but apparently the doll showed up in the lab this morning, so the real facts went right out. Like, it was right in front of the portal, I guess, but then it didn’t do anything on the meters so Dad is trying to convince them that the doll got up and dumped the ghost haunting it into the ‘Ghost Zone.’” She rolls her eyes. “So they’ve been downstairs for _hours_. And there’s nothing edible left in the fridge.”

She pauses, as Danny absorbs all of that information, and then continues. “Hey, Danny? What happened to your pants?”

“Oh. Um, teenager excercise? It’s grass. You wanna order in?” he changes the subject back to dinner, and Jazz gestures to the coffee tin on the bar that they usually keep the ordering cash in; it is, of course, empty. Danny sighs, “I’ll go ask Dad for some money if you’ll do the phone call.”

“Deal,” Jazz opens her book back up. “You’re the best! Change clothes first though, you smell like dirt.”

He sticks his tongue out at her but does as he’s told; he takes a quick shower, too, and throws on some gym shorts and a soft baggy shirt before heading downstairs again. He finds the group on the first basement level, above the lab. They’re in the Fenton Cursed Objects Vault (unlike the Fenton Weapons Vault, this one doesn’t have an armored door), gathered around the table in the center of the room. There are dolls and jewelry and even a sword spread across the tabletop, and Connie is directing Maddie on how to best arrange them for photos. Maddie is explaining the origins of a brushed gold necklace with a large dragon’s eye opal at its center when Danny knocks lightly on the door frame.

The Cursed Objects Vault always throws his ghost sense out of whack, and while he can feel the buzz of electricity under his skin even in the doorway, Danny has managed to figure out how far away he has to stand in order to not have a visible full body shudder. The doorway cuts it pretty close, but the shiver comes and goes before his dad turns around to grin at him.

“Heya, Danny,” his dad greets him with a clap on the shoulder. “Whatcha need? We’re just showing Harriet and Connie around the labs! How was school?”

“’S fine,” Danny shrugs. He waves a hello to the journalists, and Harriet returns the gesture. “Um, could we have some cash to order delivery? The can is empty. I was thinking Chinese food, maybe?”

“Sure thing!” Jack does the Fenton Jumpsuit Wallet Patdown and says, “Crud! I think I left my wallet down in the lab.”

Maddie gives him a look that Danny has come to recognize as ‘don’t ask Danny to go to the lab he got electrocuted down there’ and moves out of the way so Jack can squeeze past him through the doorway with an “I’ll be right back!”

His parents haven’t sent him to lab on his own since the Accident. Danny is pretty sure they feel responsible for his getting shocked so badly, but he also suspects that they’re worried about him messing around in the Portal. (And wouldn’t that be ironic?) It does mean he has to be sneaky about emptying the Thermos, but he can’t say he misses having chores down there.

“Oh yeah,” says Danny, turning back towards the group in the Vault. “I meant to ask before, but that’s a really cool camera - do you ever do those night sky photos with the exposure thing that makes the stars super bright?”

Connie’s brow wrinkles in confusion for a moment before Maddie supplies the context of, “Danny wants to be an astronaut, he’s very into anything to do with the stars.”

“Oh! That’s cool,” Connie smiles. “It’s actually not something I do much of, but I think there’s some on my Instagram from not awfully long ago? We were in Arizona for another one of Harriet’s pop culture projects.” Connie digs through the pockets on her jacket for a moment and then steps over to hand Danny a business card.

“Did you see any ghost lights down there?” asks Maddie, her interest piqued.

“Well, we were out there to -” Harriet starts, but Danny stops listening as Jack makes his way back into the room. He mouths a quick “thanks” to Connie for her card, and intercepts the proffered money; he interrupts Harriet with an apology so he can take everyone’s orders before heading upstairs to report back to Jazz.

They eat dinner in the kitchen; Connie joins Jack and Maddie at the table, and with the takeout boxes occupying the fourth spot Harriet ends up eating at the bar with Jazz and Danny. They’re halfway through their food when she finally asks the question Danny can tell she’s been thinking about since sitting down.

She gestures to his right arm, where the Lichtenberg figures climb up from his palm and vanish under his clothes, and asks: “Is that from your accident? The one your dad said had something to do with the EVP things?”

Jazz huffs derisively on Danny’s other side, but he answers all the same, “Yeah.”

“Hm,” she takes another bite of her pork, pensive. “Do you know what that has to do with the ghost hunting equipment, or…?”

_Yes_ , he thinks. He says, “No, not really.”

Either Harriet can tell that this line of questioning is going nowhere fast or she can feel the daggers Jazz is glaring at her, because the next question she asks is about his wanting to be an astronaut and how school is going in relation to it, or something, and dinner wraps up without incident as he gives her an earful about NASA and the private space sector around his Mongolian beef.

He finishes his essay later that night and is feeling pretty good about it, all things considered, all the way through the end of the week, when Mr. Falluca hands it back to him with a heavy sigh. He asks, with much trepidation, how exactly Danny’s paper on the extreme habitat of polar bears had ended up as a deep dive into how water bears can survive in space. Danny’s confusion must read clearly on his face, because Mr. Falluca gives him a B minus for putting some degree of effort in - with a warning to not get lost on Wikipedia the next time he has to write a paper. 

Danny makes several apologetic promises, and rides the high of his passing grade all the way to lunch, until Dash slides in next to him at the table with Harriet’s article about his parents open on his phone.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> with an hour to spare on Cali time I made my two week goal lol
> 
> Christmas will probably delay chapter three as I'll be travelling, but I should get it out in the first weekish of the new year

The week before the Homecoming Dance is… odd. There are a lot of pieces that Danny doesn’t realize go together until it’s much too late. To his credit, he thinks, he was trying to keep a low profile while Dash and his goons passed the article about his crazy ghost family around school for everyone to laugh at. Monday evening, Danny comes home to discover that Dash of all people is in his living room, studying with his sister. He gets out of there as quickly as possible, because there is no good reason for the jock to be in his house. At school on Tuesday Sam gets moody and weird, and he and Tucker attempt to give her space; then _Paulina_ catches him on the way out to _ask him to the dance_. So he goes to get a tux last minute at the mall but there’s a _ghost dragon_. Danny spends Wednesday and Thursday following Paulina around so that he can figure out what exactly he needs to do to help her with her Homecoming Court responsibilities, and he’s so busy he barely has time to think about how her new necklace looks vaguely familiar - which he feels kind of dumb about when the dragon shows back up Thursday night at the Homecoming Parade before the game. He doesn’t even manage to get the thing off of her.

The Dance itself turns out to be a truly incredible disaster. Danny would like to note that he himself isn’t really guilty of much outside of being just blindingly oblivious, but even he can admit that if he’d just bothered to ask Sam what was wrong she probably would have told him. Probably. As it stands he doesn’t get the whole story until Dragon-Sam yells at him about how vain and insincere Paulina is and how gullible and dense _Danny_ is all while she flings him back and forth across the gym. The fight is hurtful in a number of ways. He drags an unconscious Sam out to where their class has gathered around emergency responders with the necklace clutched tight in one hand - and he doesn’t miss the recognition that passes over Dash and Paulina’s faces at the sight of it.

Danny’s bruised ribs don’t fully heal until early the next week. He waits until they’re faded before he tosses the necklace into the Zone, in case the ghost inhabiting it decides to turn right back around and come back. The strangest part of the whole ordeal is when Star drags Paulina over to their table in the middle of lunch and declares, “Hi, guys! Paulina has something to say you.”

Paulina hadn’t spoken to Danny since the dance. She had come back inside during the fight to look for him, after he’d vanished, and she was now the only person outside of his friends and the ghosts to have met his ghost half, albeit briefly. Apparently she hadn’t recognized him, and his anxiety about specifically that makes her next words all the more surprising:

“I’m sorry,” Paulina says. Star makes a sort of gesture for her to continue, and she sighs heavily before going on. “I dared Dash to steal that stupid necklace after we saw it in that article, right? And then he dared me to wear it all week. So Manson, when you got all huffy about me wearing creepy jewelry I got, like, a _little_ defensive or whatever. So I’m sorry, or whatever.”

“Sure,” Sam had said. And after an unsubtle elbow from Tucker, “I’m sorry I said mean things about your jewelry, because it doesn’t actually matter.”

“Right,” Paulina turned her eyes to Danny, “And I’m sorry I only asked you to the dance to get on Manson’s nerves. You were actually, like, really sweet all last week, and it was super unfair to you how mean I was.”

“Um, thanks?” Danny glances in Star’s direction. She gives him a thumbs up.

Star used to live on the same block as FentonWorks, and she and Danny had been friends in elementary school. They don’t talk a whole lot these days, but she’s the least intimidating of the popular kids and he assumes the driving force behind this apology.

Paulina nods, satisfied, and stands back up. “Don’t ever tell anyone I said _any_ of this to you, you hear?”

“This was big for her,” Star whispers to them, before standing to follow Paulina. “Growth!”

In what he assumes is some kind of addendum to her apology, Paulina keeps Dash off of Danny’s back for the rest of the week, which is novel. He fights some weird old bird ghosts, and (of course) the Box Ghost shows up a couple of times. His parents get an invitation to a college reunion, and Friday night finds the Fentons in the RV, barreling towards Wisconsin.

Danny’s head has been a whirlwind for almost two weeks, so he’d been excited for a long, quiet ride.

“This’ll be fun, kids!” Jack bellows, and Danny says his final goodbyes to quiet. His dad is turned backwards in the passenger seat to talk to him and Jazz. “Vladdy used to be our best friend in college! He was almost as into ghosts as your mom and me.”

“He helped us build our first Ghost Portal,” Maddie adds, her eyes on the road. “It almost worked too! Although it did sort of blow up on us, didn’t it dear?”

Jack laughs, “All in the name of science! You have to be willing to take risks, or you won’t get anywhere. I don’t think we’ve seen the V-Man since he got out of the hospital, though, have we?”

Danny hears Jazz mutter something under her breath about their parents’ experiments and accidents, as she cuts her eyes towards his scar. He elbows her a little, and she huffs.

He does wonder what could have happened to Vlad Masters to keep them out of contact for so long. And why things might be different now.

His dad continues to blather on about ghosts and college, and Danny eventually falls asleep against Jazz, who wakes him with a shake as the RV rumbles up what seems to be a very long and very fancy driveway.

The Masters Estate - Jazz tells him he missed the large ornate sign on the gate - has a driveway lined with tall rows of trees. They fall away to beautiful landscaping around a circular drive, and Danny imagines that in the spring the whole thing must bloom a hundred colors. The mansion they park in front of looks very old - and a little creepy. Lights are on in only a couple of the windows, and there are barely any outdoor lights.

Jack hauls himself out of the RV as Danny and Jazz dig for their shoes, long abandoned on the hours-long car ride. He marches right up to the front door and begins banging. Danny wonders what time it must be and is surprised to discover that it is not quite midnight when he checks - his parents drive like maniacs, though, so he supposes that’s not too surprising after all.

Maddie joins Jack at the door, scooting him out of the way so that she can knock at a more personable volume. Mind you, it’s still loud knocking at fifteen to midnight, but at least it’s a little calmer. Danny and Jazz slink up behind them, trying to figure out which facial expression best conveys “hello stranger I’m sorry my parents are Loud.” The night air is chilly, and Danny shivers in just his t-shirt, wishing he’d thought to grab his jacket.

The window next to the door lights up orange, and a moment later the door opens to reveal a thin man with gray hair, pulled back in a ponytail. He has dark bags under his eyes and looks severely down his nose at the people gathered on his doorstep before his features relax and he greets, “Aaaah, Maddie! Jack. You’re… _early_.”

“V-Man!” Jack bellows, hopping up the last stair and across the threshold to force the door open further in order to clap Vlad on the shoulder in companionable greeting. “Long time no see! How’ve you been?”

“Delighted to see you, old friend,” Vlad steps back to allow Maddie and the kids to enter. Danny notes that Vlad isn’t in his pajamas, at least, so they must not have woken him. He also notices that Vlad carries a cane, although he averts his eyes quickly when he realizes he’s been caught staring. Vlad closes the door behind them all. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until morning, you know.”

“Traffic was much better than we expected it to be,” Maddie says. “So we thought we’d come on all the way. Oh! Vlad, these are our kids - Jazz and Danny.”

“Hi,” says Danny, as Jazz offers her hand to shake. Vlad takes it, and then shakes Danny’s. It really must be cold, he thinks, because Vlad is comparatively almost _too_ warm.

“Lovely to meet you both,” Vlad offers.

“Hey Vladdy, my man,” Jack slides an arm around Vlad’s shoulders. “You mind if we park the RV here overnight? I’d hate to have to find our way back in the morning, y’know, and the Fenton Assault Vehicle is fully self-sufficient!”

“Tell you what, Jack,” says Vlad, with a veneer of patience Danny supposes must come from being long-time friends with his father, “Why don’t you all stay in the house tonight? I’ve got plenty of space, and surely that’s better than waisting all of that fuel? Plus, the manor has been know to house a spirit or two, and I _know_ how you feel about a good haunting.”

“Oh! That sounds delightful,” Maddie answers. “We haven’t stayed in a real haunted house in years. Jack, dear, come help me get the bags. We’ll be right back in.”

And now Danny knows why this man was friends with his parents.

He watches his parents leave, and turns to try and make small talk. He’s very thankful when Jazz beats him to the punch with, “Thanks for letting us stay the night, Mr. Masters. You have a really beautiful home.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Vlad brightens. “It actually dates back to the Victorian spiritualism era - it was built by a prominent medium and her husband, to host seances - thus the ghosts, see. If you like I can show you both around some of the original parts of the building tomorrow before the reunion gets started.”

“That sounds cool, if you have the time,” Danny says. Because it does sound cool, and what else is he going to do tomorrow? Jazz voices her agreement as their parents return with the bags. They pass Danny and Jazz their duffles and then Vlad gestures for them to follow him up the nearest set of stairs, flipping lights on as he goes.

“Thanks for letting us stay, Vladdy,” Jack follows up directly behind him. “You sure are a heck of a guy, you know that? Why, it’s a crying shame we’ve been out of touch for so long. I didn’t even know you were living in Wisconsin these days ‘til we got the invite - you’re so close! We’ll have to have you up to FentonWorks sometime soon! It sure would be nice for the kids to get to know their godfather, and I bet we’ve got a lot of new gadgets to get y—”

Vlad stops, turns, and says, “Their _what?_ ”

“What?” echo Jazz and Danny. “Since when?”

“Vlad here is your godfather - _you_ know!” Jack continues. “I’m sure we told you ol’ pal, sent a letter or a card or something, didn’t we, Mads?”

“Well,” says Maddie, shifting her bag to her other shoulder. “I thought we did. But better late than never, I suppose! All the more reason to do more visiting after this weekend, don’t you think?”

“…I see,” says Vlad. He tugs on his collar a moment, seems to come to some kind of resolution, and turns to continue up the stairs. “We’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do.”

Danny and Jazz share a bewildered look, and follow their parents after Vlad.

It really is a nice house, he thinks. There’s a lot of detail carved into the wooden fixtures throughout the house, and they had passed a couple of fancy paintings of portraits and landscapes downstairs. The hallway they found themselves in now, however, was lined on both sides with framed jerseys and memorabilia related to the Green Bay Packers. There’s even an autographed football in a glass case tucked into one of the niches, although he doesn’t know enough about football to recognize the name.

Danny sleeps soundly - until he’s woken by his ghost sense sparking up his spine. For a moment he lays still, wondering if it’s worth it to worry about what might be perfectly fine residential ghosts. He sighs, though, and gets up. It’s probably best to investigate.

It takes a moment to relocate his pants, but once they’re on he goes ghost, turns invisible, and phases out the door to follow the electricity in his nervous system to whatever ghosts may be about.

His parents are in the hall, ghost detecting equipment in hand. The familiar beeping of Fenton tech fades as he follows his ghost sense down through the floor, and down again, into a basement laboratory that might better be described as a library - with a Ghost Portal set into the far wall. Danny supposes Vlad’s accident hadn’t set him off of ghostly scientific endeavors after all. There are more books than electronics down here, though this lab has a row of eerie containers of green goo to match the one back home. One wall has a display of Ouija boards and dowsing rods and ornate mirrors. A glass jewelry case is pushed against the far wall, and Danny could swear he hears some of the jewels within it whispering. The most unusual things in the room, however, are its occupants: Skulker, and a new ghost who might actually just be Gary Oldman’s Dracula.

Probably-Dracula is tall and broad-shouldered; he’s wearing a red-lined black coat like a cape over an ambiguously fancy ensemble that Danny’s uneducated guess dates to the same era as the house. His black hair swoops up two pointed horns, with streaks of white at his temples. He even has the fangs to finish the vampire aesthetic.

Skulker feels weirdly out of place here, inspecting some kind of gun, although Danny realizes that it’s probably him who doesn’t belong as both ghosts begin to scan the room for him. He really should remember that ghost sense seems to work both ways.

“Who’s there?” asks the Dracula ghost with a sneer. “Show yourself, and perhaps I’ll go easy on you.”

Danny weighs his options, and allows himself to become visible.

“Ha ha!” Skulker’s face lights up, and he fires a net in Danny’s direction before he can react. “I thought it might be you, whelp!”

The net hits home, and Danny tumbles to the floor in a heap.

“This makes things simple, Plasmius. I’ll just take him off your hands,” Skulker stalks forward and Danny begins to panic. He manages to use a couple of electric ectoblasts to slice through the netting with a _zing!_ just as Skulker gets close.

Danny floats upwards but doesn’t have time to get a shot off at Skulker before the robot ghost is yanked backwards by something invisible and deposited near the Portal.

“I believe I can take care of my own intruders, Skulker. You have your mission,” the Dracula ghost - Plasmius - says. Skulker looks ready to argue until Plasmius readies a hot pink ectoblast, at which point he shoulders his net gun and vanishes into the green miasma of the Zone.

“Oh, um, th-” Danny is cut off by Plasmius launching the fiery pink ectoblast directly into him, launching him backwards. He just barely manages to go intangible in time to not crash bodily into the wall, but as he hits the concrete on the other side with a sharp burst of pain, he feels himself losing hold of his ghost side.

The last thing he sees before he passes into unconsciousness is the bright white light of his own transformation.

———

Vlad Masters had not been expecting the Fentons to arrive the night before his reunion party setup. He’d still been trying to arrange things with the vultures so as to humiliate his ex-best friend in the most public way he could think up - part one of a very long revenge scheme he finally felt ready to enact. It was all very dramatic, to be quite honest.

He’d had to cut the planning short when the knocking had started. He’d actually _steamed_ a little as he approached the door, and wasn’t that just a sign of how frustrating he still found Jack Fenton?

He was genuinely glad to see Maddie, he supposed. She wasn’t at fault for his accident, after all, so the only thing he truly had to hold against her was her loyalty to Jack. Perhaps, in another life… he would wait to dwell on that later. It wouldn’t do to sabotage his own plans so early on. Maddie’s daughter Jazz had been a strange sight, so nearly identical to Maddie herself the last time Vlad had seen her. She was polite, if tired, and he quickly decided that she was tolerable.

Maddie’s son, however. Danny, he believed they’d said. Vlad hadn’t missed the Lichtenberg figure climbing up his right arm, and he wondered just how many _lab accidents_ the Fentons might have had in their long separation. The boy was gaunt, and clearly exhausted, although perhaps that’s simply the way of being a teenager.

To find out that they were his godchildren had been quite the surprise. He’d debated calling off the plan just to reorganize some of it, but surely this changed nothing. Did it matter, in the end? He didn’t know these children, so why should finding out something like that out change anything? And it hadn’t, for the better part of three hours.

He’d met with Skulker to provide upgrades and send the hunter ghost on his next foray into the Zone, and he’d taken care of his intruder - that ghost from Amity Park he’d been hearing so many whispers about. Such a nuisance.

Then he’d watched the ghost child transform into the Fenton boy. Into _Jack’s son_. And the plan had changed.

———

Danny wakes up back in bed, unsure of how he’d gotten there.

He rises with a start - and finds Plasmius, casually seated in an armchair just beyond the foot of the bed, watching him.

Danny goes ghost and phases up through the duvet, floating into a defensive position above the four poster. Plasmius just watches him, without even flinching at the bright light of his transformation.

“Remarkable,” Plasmius says. He gestures to Danny, “Relax, son. You’re far too interesting to kill here and now. How, exactly, did you end up a halfa?”

Danny allows himself to float back towards the mattress, but remains alert. “You hit me earlier. Why should I trust you now?”

“A good question, I suppose, except that you’re in _my_ lair,” the older ghost answers. “Let’s just say I’m intrigued - did your parents do this to you, Daniel?”

“I’m - hm,” Danny frowns. “I’d ask you not to tell them… but you’re a ghost, so they won’t let you get a word in edgewise anyway. It was kind of my fault, I guess - and, wait, your lair? Isn’t this Mr. Masters’ house?”

Plasmius smiles, and Danny spots fangs. “In a sense. It’s also my lair though, and my Portal, and my decision who comes and goes. I am the master of the house here, you see, and it’s my decision whether you live or die for trespassing in it. But it’s not your fault, I suppose - you’ve only been a ghost for what? A few weeks? I’ve heard of you, you know. The ghost child of Amity Park who protects the humans and carries a _thermos_ to trap his own kind.”

“I just don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Danny says. “Ghost or human. The ghosts are dangerous to people, and my parents are - I don’t want to know what they’d do to a ghost if they caught one. I don’t even know what they’d do to _me_ if -” his voice breaks, and he curls in on himself a little. “It’s my fault the Portal is even open. I just want to keep everything the way it should be.”

There is a moment of silence, and then Danny feels a comforting hand on his shoulder. He looks up to find Plasmius, wearing a kinder expression than Danny would have thought his sharp features to be capable of.

“A noble endeavor,” Plasmius says, “but a foolish one. You cannot hope to keep so many wild cards under control, especially as the inexperienced newly dead.”

Danny sighs. And then he has an idea. “Could you teach me? About ghost powers and things? You’re the only ghost I’ve met that didn’t stick to trying to kill me.”

“ _Teach_ you? Why would I - hm,” an unreadable expression crosses Plasmius’ face. He seems to consider the request another minute or two, and then he says, “You know, I’ve been looking for an assistant in my studies of the Ghost Zone. You have a Portal, yes?”

Danny feels hopeful for the first time in - in _weeks_ , probably, he thinks, and answers, “Yes.”

“Meet me in the Ghost Zone this time next week,” Plasmius says. “I’ll have no problem finding you. I believe I may have a bargain for you at that point - until next time, Daniel.”

Plasmius is gone, then. Danny says “Thank you!” to the empty air, in case the ghost can still hear him, and thumps back onto the mattress as he lets his ghost form go in exchange for the pull of gravity. The room is plummeted into darkness, and Danny buries his grinning face in his pillow as he pulls the covers over his head.

He has a _teacher_.

Maybe, just maybe, this ghost thing will get a little easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bless everyone who has been leaving comments, they make my day every time i see the emails


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a little shorter, but we're finally going to get a glimpse of what's up with Vlad.
> 
> Now that the holidays are past, I hope to get back to every other week updates.

Vlad doesn’t sleep, that night, after leaving Daniel’s room.

He has to call the vultures back again, for one thing, and cancel his very clever plan for humiliating Jack Fenton in front of a large enough group of people to ensure his lifelong disgrace. (He’s actually not certain that Jack won’t accomplish that on his own, anyway, judging by how many of his flaws seem to have concentrated into worse and worse traits over the last twenty years.) The untangling of his machinations is almost as tedious as weaving them had been in the first place, but luckily for Vlad he hardly needed to sleep these days, anyway. Skulker checks in at one point, confirming the location of at least one library in the Ghost Zone - an interesting milestone in Vlad’s more grandiose plans that will have to wait to be investigated another day.

Vlad spent most of his time as Plasmius, if he could help it. As a ghost he didn’t require sleep and barely required food to keep his human half alive. Flying - or teleporting - everywhere eliminated the frustration of his bad leg on the staircases, which granted him an efficiency he was bitterly missing this morning as he shuffled around the kitchen in the flesh.

At any moment, he knew, a dreaded _Fenton_ would descend the staircase and start making demands for food. He was lucky he’d sent for groceries recently, or he wouldn’t have had anything except tea to offer his godchildren. 

The word still felt wrong, even in his mind’s eye. He was no parental figure by any measure, and quite frankly didn’t see why Jack or Maddie would have even considered him by the time they started having children - he’d certainly tried to forget _them_ in the maybe five years between his incident with the prototype and when their daughter was born. 

As if on cue, Vlad hears footsteps on the stairs. 

Jasmine enters the room, closely followed by a bedraggled Daniel. She is awake and dressed for the day, her hair plaited down her back. He is hiding inside of an overly large white hoodie and squinting groggily at his surroundings.

“Good morning, Mr. Masters,” Jasmine greets. 

“Good morning, my dear,” he responds. “There’s a pot of coffee on, if you’d like.” 

“Thanks,” mumbles Daniel. “G’morning.”

Vlad arches an eyebrow, and Jasmine sighs. She says, “He’ll be human once he’s had some caffeine, sorry.” 

They’re quiet for a moment, then, and Vlad watches Jasmine hand her brother each ingredient of what adds up to a very sweet and creamy cup of morning coffee one at a time. Daniel drops the sugar spoon through his hand twice, but Jasmine doesn’t seem to notice. Daniel’s scarred right arm has a slight tremor to it, to which Vlad supposes the Fentons must attribute the intangibility slip-ups. 

Once Daniel is set to carefully sip his sickly sweet brew, Jasmine pours herself a cup of black coffee and looks to Vlad. “Did you mean what you said, about the tour? I know we sort of barged in, last night, so if you’re busy we’ll understand.” 

“I have the time,” Vlad says. He doesn’t know why, exactly. “Are your parents awake, yet?” 

“Ugh,” says Daniel, cradling his beverage like a lifeline. “No, they probably won’t be up for another couple of hours. They’re kind of nocturnal.” 

Vlad hums noncommittally.

The trio finishes their breakfast in an almost companionable silence. Once the dishes have been cleared - thanks to Jasmine, who shoos Daniel away when he attempts to help - Vlad gets to his feet and retrieves his cane from where it’s leaning against the wall behind him. 

Vlad decides to start the tour on the third floor, and he leads the children to the elevator he’d added to the back of the house.

“I modernized the elevator, of course, but the original owners did have one in about this location,” he tells them, as they ride. 

“I wish our house had an elevator,” Daniel says. He scrunches his nose in a way that reminds Vlad rather starkly of Maddie, back in the day. “I live on the third floor and I always have to climb.” 

His sister rolls her eyes. “You’re the one that wanted to move up there.” 

The elevator chimes, and Vlad leads them down the hall a short distance to the solarium. He takes some satisfaction in the wonder on their faces as they look around. This room has a fully glass outer wall and ceiling, and the chaise lounge is placed perfectly to allow for a beautiful view of the Wisconsin forests that stretch out behind the manor. Directly below, they can also see the pond and the estate garden. He gives them some history on the room and the original lady of the house. Daniel asks about a few of the plants in the room, and Jasmine bemoans their own lack of a back yard large enough to grow much. 

Vlad enjoys the warmth of the sun for another moment, then ushers the children back into the hall and to the next point of interest. He leads them through what were once servants’ quarters on the third floor, although the original interiors are long gone and he now uses the rooms mainly as storage.

“You’re both in high school, correct?” Vlad asks.

“Yes,” Jasmine answers. “Danny’s a sophomore and I’m a senior.” 

Vlad hums, then says, “So I assume you’ve been applying to colleges, then?” 

Jasmine brightens and Daniel huffs, and Vlad isn’t left to wonder why for long as Jasmine launches into a description of her college application woes and her struggle with deciding which school is the most beneficial to her in her pursuit of psychology. He interrupts her briefly as they arrive at the service stairs, to inform the children of their authenticity, and Jasmine picks up immediately afterward with how she’s hoping that her participation with scholastic government and the Casper High debate team will help to set her applications apart in some of the more prestigious academies. 

“You certainly seem like you have a great deal worked out, my dear,” Vlad says as soon as he can get a word in edgewise. They’ve arrived at the second floor, across the house from where their parents are still sleeping. “I’m sure you have nothing to worry about. And what about you, Daniel? Planning for college yet?” 

“What? Oh,” Daniel shrugs. Vlad gets the distinct impression that the younger teen had been tuning his sister out a bit. “I’m kind of just trying to keep my grades up right now and stay in shape, I guess. I used to be on the track team but I’m kind of taking a break.” 

Vlad arches an eyebrow, and Daniel shuffles a bit. 

He elaborates, “I had an accident in our parents’ lab back home a few weeks ago. So the doctor said I should take some time off.” 

“Healing is important, even - especially - for teens,” Jasmine adds with an air of authority. “A period of rest after a traumatic event is necessary for your continued physical _and_ mental health. Besides, you have at least another year before the college search is anything you’ll need to be stressed about.”

“As long as I get into an astronaut program I don’t really care which college it is,” Daniel says with a frown. “And I’m not traumatized.” 

Vlad would beg to differ, based on what he learned about the boy last night. He tucked away the information he was learning about Daniel and changed the subject before an argument could break out, leading the teens through the second floor. 

They passed through the master suite, and Vlad pointed out some of the restored furniture in the bedroom and office. He had a beautiful ornate hardwood desk in the office, with hand carved detailing and a couple of hidden drawers. Jasmine was rather taken by the fancy brass key that went with it, with its delicate filigree. 

The open foyer is a longer stop. Daniel is rather taken with the constellations painted into the murals on the ceiling, and Vlad listens as he identifies every one of them. Vlad explains the connection between some of the stars and the spiritualism movement, and feels the full force of Daniel’s attention for the first time since meeting him as Plasmius. He loses him when he moves on to talk about the grand staircase, and they soon move on to the other side of the manor. Soft snoring can be heard emanating from the bedroom Vlad directed Jack and Maddie to, but no one pays it any mind. 

Jasmine’s eyes widen as she takes in the sheer volume of football paraphernalia, having finally taken the time to really absorb it all. “Wow, that’s… a lot of Packers stuff. You’re a - hm. Why not just buy the team, though?” 

Vlad’s answer is venomous as he hisses through his teeth, “ _They won’t sell it to me_.” 

The twin looks of surprise on the kids’ faces tells Vlad that his response was a little over the top, and he smooths his hair back with one hand and adjusts his grip on his cane before continuing, in a much calmer tone, “I have tried, my dear. Perhaps some day the tides will turn. Here, let’s head downstairs - surely you’d like to see the seance parlor?” 

The seance parlor is interestingly not something either of the Fenton teens has an interest in lingering in, though they take the time to politely make a circuit around the table with its inlaid Ouija board and listen as Vlad spends a few minutes recounting the kinds of spirits said to have been summoned and spoken to here - he catches himself rambling, in the same way Danny had gone on about the constellations earlier, and pulls himself away to press onward. 

They pass through the dining hall and the kitchen, though the latter has been so firmly pulled into the modern age as to be largely irrelevant to a historic tour. He mentions that there’s a downstairs with a cellar and an old rainwater filtration system, but they are cut short as the caterers for the evening’s event arrive and Vlad bids his godchildren farewell for the time being. 

As their little tour ends, Vlad can hear Jack and Maddie waking up upstairs. He is thankfully rescued from having to spend too much time reconnecting with his most hated rival as he directs the caterers and event decorators for the party. He spends the rest of his afternoon caught up in preparations, and doesn’t see much of any of the Fentons until the other guests begin to arrive in the early evening. 

The next few hours are a blur of superficial conversations with people he barely remembers, an effect of both their long time apart and his stint in the hospital at the end of his college career. He makes a couple of decent business connections, at least, and watches as Jack attempts to get dancing going at least three times. The dirty looks his wife and children keep sending him are a boost to Vlad’s mood. 

His skin begins to crawl after a while. He’s been human all day, in his own lair. He itches to let his core breathe and give his leg a break. The party is unbearably boring without the entertainment of his schemes, and he briefly considers simply going on ahead with the plan to possess Jack and orchestrate his ruination. 

It’s not quite late when the last of the party guests leave - the Fentons, of course, although Jasmine seems to be leading the ship when it comes to polite goodbyes. Vlad can’t say he’s surprised. Once they’ve cleared their belongings and the taillights of their hulking RV have disappeared down the drive, Vlad revels in a moment of peaceful solitude. 

Tomorrow, the cleaning company will arrive and resolve the mess of his dining hall. Tonight he has some things to accomplish. The black rings of his transformation are a welcome release from the evening. He drops through the floor and makes his way back to his lab; Skulker had left him a map of the Ghost Zone with the library he’d found marked on it, and Vlad planned to work off some of the frustration of his evening on the journey there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter we're back to Danny, and maybe a little rainstorm.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello I am late
> 
> but I am here

The week after the reunion is normal - or, well, it’s normal as things ever are for Danny, lately. The Box Ghost turns up again, because of course he does. He fights a few ectopusses here and there and waits with baited breath for Friday night. He’ll be meeting up with Plasmius for his first lesson. And it will be his first trip into the Ghost Zone.

Sam and Tucker don’t like the idea at all, he finds.

They are both nervous about him traveling into the Zone by himself, and Danny can’t really blame them. He has his own anxieties over the prospect. But the idea of getting some actual help with the confusing and apparently ever-expanding array of his ghost powers is too good to pass up, and Plasmius is the only ghost he’s met so far who was willing to stop and talk. The connection to Skulker did itch in the back of his thoughts, but Danny decides to worry about it later. He hopes he doesn’t regret it.

Thursday finds Danny dancing on pins and needles.

His excitement is partly to blame, of course, but there’s something else in the air that has him on edge.

The dark clouds gathering outside provide the answer - there’s a storm brewing in the sky over Amity Park. The air is humid and heavy, and Danny can feel something of his ghostly energy stirring near his heart. He static shocks Jazz three times on the trip home.

Danny is in his room - attempting to sit still enough to do his homework - when the first crack of thunder booms. He can feel it in his bones, and he moves to the front windows to watch the rain fall. When the first bright flash of lightning zags across the sky, he has the strangest urge.

_I want to be up there._

He hesitates. He feels a pull, again, next to his heart.

And he’s flying.

Danny soars up into the thunderhead, electricity crackling down his spine - does he have a spine, as a ghost? The cloud is thick and black and within it arcs almost nonstop lightning, and Danny dives and rolls around the bolts - and he’s smiling so wide he can feel it, can taste the rain.

He wonders, briefly, how the thing that killed him could make him feel so alive.

He breaks through the bottom of the thunderhead with a whoop and stops, hovering in the rain. For a moment he’s perfectly at peace. His body hums in tune with the electric charge in the air, and he feels the thunder roll through him as the clouds rumble. He watches the roiling sky above him by the light of his own glow.

Lightning strikes.

Lightning strikes Danny, and there’s a split second of terror - a memory of a moment, of pain like he’s never known, of _dying_ \- and it passes and… he feels _fantastic_. He trembles with energy, feels fireworks beneath his skin. It’s like he’s been poured full of pop rocks, and the electricity within him arcs between his hands - he laughs, elated, and rockets back up into the thunderhead.

He doesn’t know how long he’s up there, trading lightning strikes with the sky.

He doesn’t sleep, though. He doesn’t need to - Danny is so keyed up on the electric energy that he’s still static shocking everything at school the next day, long after the storm has dissipated (Dash shoves him against the lockers on the way to lunch, and gets a nasty shock for the trouble).

Sam and Tucker stay the night at FentonWorks. As soon as his parents call up their good nights, Danny phases all three of them down to the lab.

“Okay,” he says, shuffling from one foot to the other in front of the open Portal. The thrum of electricity inside of him isn’t super great for his nerves. “Okay. If I’m not back by, I dunno, morning? Please come find me.”

“Dude, how?” asks Tucker.

“Um,” says Danny, helpfully. They should probably have worked this out earlier in the week, he thinks.

“If you’re not back by morning I’m gonna tell your parents you were kidnapped by a ghost and let them figure it out,” Sam says. “After that it’s up to you to work out, but it should get the job done.”

Danny and Tucker blink at her, for a second. Danny says “please don’t” as Tucker says “yeah, okay.”

“That’s both a threat and a promise,” Sam crosses the lab to Danny, and punches him affectionately in the arm. He shocks her, a little, by accident. “ _Ow_ \- so you better come back, okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Danny assures. “Probably. I’m mostly not worried about it.”

“That sounds so positive and comforting,” Tucker says. He’s over by one of the lab tables, rifling through FentonWorks tech. “Ah-ha! Found what I was looking for.”

Danny and Sam watch him fiddle for a minute, then he moves to them and hands Danny one of his parents’ spirit boxes. Tucker has a matching one.

“I got them to connect to each other like walkie talkies. I think it should work from here to the Zone,” Tucker explains. “Give us a test when you get in there, yeah?”

Danny nods, then goes ghost. There’s an electric ripple to the white rings that pass over him, and he glows almost bright enough to rival the Portal itself this time. Electricity crawls up his sleeves, and Danny assumes the added brightness has to do with the rest of his overflowing energy. He’ll ask Plasmius, he decides, with a rush of excitement.

Danny moves to hug his friends goodbye, but they both dodge him.

“I love you, Danny, but you have like a terrifying amount of electricity on you right now,” Tucker says.

“Oh,” Danny says. _Duh_. “That’s fair. I’ll, um. I’ll see you in a few hours, okay?”

“Good luck,” Sam waves as Danny takes a deep, unnecessary breath and floats through the Portal.

The last time Danny was in the Portal, he died. He’s happy to find that this time doesn’t feel nearly so bad, and is in fact more like diving into a pool of water, if that water was instead just minty-cold air. He wonders if he should’ve worn more than just a hoodie for this, before remembering that cold doesn’t really bother him as a ghost.

The Portal dumps him out into empty air, and Danny gets his first look at the Ghost Zone. It’s… big. Possibly limitless, Danny thinks, based on the swirling green fog that rolls listlessly along in all directions. There are a few rocky landmasses suspended throughout the Zone that he can see; they’re weirdly purple in color but he thinks they kind of resemble asteroids. Above him, the fog swirls up and up until it bleeds together into a brackish green-gray sky. Below him it seems to go on to an unimaginable depth, growing ever darker until it’s finally black, with odd twinkling spots of light that almost remind him of stars. He turns a slow circle, and finds more of the same misty green atmosphere and ominous purple rocks as far as he can see.

Behind him, the Portal pulls the mist into a spiral that glows neon green at it’s center. It’s kind of terrifying, here on its own. Not that the Portal in the basement of his house _isn’t_ terrifying, he supposes.

Danny startles when the spirit box in his hand crackles, and Tucker’s voice warbles through. “Did you make it through okay? Over.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s super weird in here, though,” Danny holds the box up very close to his face, as the fog seems to be dampening the sound in a weird way. Like underwater sound effects in movies.

There’s a beat of quiet, then Tucker again: “You should take a picture for us. And you have to say ‘over’ so we know you’re done talking, over.”

“I will not,” Danny says, rolling his eyes. “Say ‘over’ I mean. I’ll totally take pictures.”

“What _does_ it look like?” Sam, this time. “And is Plasmius there yet?”

“Did you play Dragon Age? Because it looks like the Fade, except it’s emptier here, and it’s really weird that they got it that right,” he answers, as he scans the (horizon? sky??) area for signs of the other ghost. “And I’m not seeing him yet I don’t thiiii - oh!”

His ghost sense crackles. In the distance, Danny spots a glowing figure flying his direction.

“I see him. I’ll call if I need you, okay?” Danny waits for their confirmation, then tucks the spirit box into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie. He pulls his phone out and snaps a quick photo of the Zone and puts it back as the other ghost approaches.

Plasmius slows as he gets close, and Danny glides out to meet him with a wave. He ignores the electricity that crackles up his sleeve with the motion.

“Daniel,” Plasmius greets.

“Hi,” he answers. “Um, Danny is fine.”

Plasmius hums noncommittally, “You should consider another name for your new self, you know. It’s tradition.”

Danny nods, and tucks the information away for later. Sam will be way better at name picking than he is, anyway. He says, “I’ll think about it. So, um. You mentioned an offer, last week, right?”

“I did, yes,” the other ghost gestures broadly around them and continues, “Having put some thought into your request I find I’m rather in need of an assistant. The Ghost Zone isn’t nearly this barren the whole way through, you see. Your Portal is in an unusually empty quadrant - my own opened in a much more densely populated area, distressingly close to the Maltese Royal Opera House.”

“The what?” Danny asks. He shakes another shower of sparks off of one ankle. The nervous energy in him is having a really hard time staying, well, _in_ him.

Plasmius continues without answering him, “There are an unending number of landmarks and figures from both ancient and recent history stuck here in the Zone - castles, statuary, homes, whole towns, even - and there is so much to be learned from their contents. To that end I’ve been drawing a map and for that, my boy, I could use _you_ \- help me explore the Zone and I’m happy to show you the ropes, as it were, with your newfound powers. Speaking of - what’s going on with you, right now? It’s very distracting.”

“Oh,” Danny shakes his other ankle out. This was much less irritating in his human body, he thinks. “I, uh, got struck by lightning. A lot. Last night. I spent last night flying around in a thunderstorm getting struck by lightning. But um, that sounds cool? Like, I don’t mind helping you make a map if you don’t mind teaching me some stuff. I think that’s fair.”

There’s a beat then, as Plasmius spends a moment considering him. He extends a hand out for Danny to shake, and Danny does his best to will the electricity back before he takes it. If he shocks Plasmius it must not be too badly, because the older ghost doesn’t even jump.

“It seems we’ve reached an agreement, my boy. And that you’ve figured out what kind of core you’re working with, I’d say. Come along,” Plasmius turns and begins to glide back into the Zone. Danny flies after him. “Your core is, of course, the center of your being. It is the lens through which all other aspects of your nature are filtered - yours, I believe, is quite clearly an electric type. Skulker’s is, as well - I believe you’ve met?”

“I - yes,” Danny answers. “Is that why he can absorb my attacks sometimes? Wait, what kind of core do you have?”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. I have a fire core, myself, but the differences between us should be more helpful than harmful in this endeavor. There are of course several core types besides ours, like ice or earth or the more enigmatic beast or dark cores. You’ll come across them in our time in the Zone, I’m sure. Eventually your own core will be able to inform your identification of other ghosts’ cores.”

Danny wonders if perhaps he should be taking notes.

“Have you identified your obsession, yet? It could take longer to become obvious, considering the… nature of what you are.”

Danny shrugs, before realizing that Plasmius can’t see him do that while he’s flying behind him. “I don’t… think I have one? I don’t know?”

“All ghosts have an obsession, Daniel,” Plasmius says. “It’s the secondary decider for the abilities we all develop. Even the Box Ghost is a fine example; surely you don’t think _cardboard telekinesis_ is a standard poltergeist power?”

“Oh,” Danny says, “No. Um, where are we going?”

“My lair. It will be important that you are able to find your way there, so pay attention to your surroundings,” Plasmius answers.

Danny turns to look at his Portal. There are almost no good landmarks in the area, but he takes note of the wonky asteroid floating nearby, and the pattern of brighter almost-stars visible in the darkness below them. They kind of make an “F” with a curly top, which should be easy enough to remember. Like the FentonWorks sign at home.

As they make their way further into the Zone, Danny notices the purple asteroids beginning to form larger landmasses. Some of them are covered in oddly colored foliage. The occasional ghostly occupant sets his ghost sense off with a buzz, but they pass them by without incident. Danny keeps track of landmarks - a funny tree, an old-fashioned farmhouse, a clump of red stars below them - finding them becomes easier as they approach a more densely populated area of the Zone.

The gentle sparking of Danny’s ghost sense quickly fades to background noise as they glide over what seems to be a town. It’s a weird town, for sure; there are buildings Danny thinks might be from the old west bumped up against brightly colored townhouses and ancient stone structures. Above the city float smaller asteroids dappled with more anachronistic buildings and plants. In the distance, he can see a towering stone lighthouse. He had expected the Zone to look more like a horror movie - dilapidated landscapes and crumbling buildings barely visible in the darkness. But everything here seems to be fully intact, with a hazy dream-like quality that would feel more at home in paintings.

Plasmius turns when he notices Danny falling behind to take in his surroundings.

“It’s not much farther,” Plasmius says. “And there’s more to be seen towards the center of town.”

“Sorry,” says Danny, catching up. “Did all of this come from the human world?”

Plasmius makes a sort of so-so motion with his head, “In a sense, I suppose. Ghosts are the memories of living things, yes? The architecture here is the memory of the things built in the human world.”

Danny _hms_ , and follows Plasmius further into town.

A minute more and they begin to ascend through a collection of smaller landmasses. The largest of them is home to a massive structure with columns the whole way around it that Danny thinks might be the opera house Plasmius had mentioned earlier.

“Here we are, my boy,” Plasmius finally says, approaching a Victorian-looking manor that Danny thinks looks a lot like Vlad Masters’ house. Which makes sense, considering where they met. They’re far above the town enough now to see it laid out below them in layers. It glows greenly against the darkness at the bottom of the Zone, and the not-stars are faded almost to nothing in contrast.

Despite its outward appearance, the doors to Plasmius’ lair don’t open to a grand foyer like the Masters Estate does. Instead, Danny finds himself in a laboratory - wide and open, two stories tall, and with a Portal lodged into the farthest wall near the ceiling. In the center is a long table with an unfinished map spread out on it.

“Wow,” says Danny. “You live here?”

“Here and in the manor on the other side, yes,” Plasmius answers, floating towards the map. “Now I have a puzzle I’d like you to solve, if you can - it’s meant to contain directions, but I’m afraid it’s a bit out of my wheelhouse.”

“You think I can help?” Danny follows him and Plasmius picks up a small, circular object.

“I do hope so, Daniel. This is what I’ve been able to map so far, but I hear tell that somewhere deeper in the Zone lies a Library filled to the brim with histories both human and ghostly. As a historian myself the chance of such a resource cannot simply be ignored, so I’ve tracked down _this_ ,” Plasmius hands him the device.

Danny contemplates it, head tilted as he turns it over and around in his head. He knows what it is, he thinks, but he’s never seen one in person. Only in pictures. But where? In a book? Wikipedia? It’s almost like a pocket watch, but with two rotating concentric circles right on the face, and a single adjustable straight arm instead of the hands a clock would have. The circles have little symbols engraved in them, with notches cut into the outer edges that line up with with dots driven into the face underneath. Oh, of course, Danny thinks.

“It’s an astrolabe,” Danny declares. “Are those lights down below stars?”

“You know, I don’t know,” Plasmius admits. “The bottom of the Zone is uninhabitable, so far as I’m aware. Anything that goes too far down simply doesn’t come back up. You think they’re related?”

Danny hums and floats over to Plasmius to show him how to line up the arm, “The ones near my Portal were in kind of a shape. They might work like constellations even if they aren’t stars, as long as they’re consistent. The astrolabe won’t be very helpful without at least a couple of points to start with.”

“I see,” Plasmius says. “Then I suppose I know what I’m looking for next. Thank you, my boy, that was an incredibly quick answer.”

“It’s star stuff,” Danny shrugs. “They also used them to track the movements of the planets, but that one’s weird. I guess since the Zone is weird. I think… I read about them in a book, at some point.”

“Do you remember every book you read with that kind of clarity?”

“I wish,” Danny scoffs. “My English grade would be a lot higher. Wh- _ohhhh_.”

Plasmius raises an eyebrow and opens his mouth to speak, but he’s interrupted by a knock on the door. The knocker doesn’t wait for an answer from within, and Danny turns to the entrance in time to see a shadow phase through the door.

Well, sort of a shadow. Sort of a lady, maybe, given the general silhouette, but the only truly discernible feature she has are a set of acid-green pupil-less eyes. She glides towards them with a jaunty flick of her ghostly tail.

“Plasmius! I thought that was you I smelled flying by! And who is your _delicious_ new friend?” She stops next to Danny and runs her hand down his arm. He shivers, and has the strangest sensation of the static that’s been running through him for the last couple days rushing to the point where she’s touching him.

“Spectra,” Plasmius drawls. “Delightful to see you as always. No manservant today?”

“I don’t keep him on a leash,” she rolls her eyes, or something close enough to the gesture. It’s hard to tell.

Danny shrugs out of her grip, feeling a little off kilter. She stays in his personal space. Frustrating.

“Could’ve fooled me, my dear,” Plasmius takes the astrolabe from Danny and puts it away, somewhere out of sight, and gestures back towards him. “This is my new assistant, Daniel.”

“Danny,” he corrects, with a twinge of irritation. He takes a deep breath. It wouldn’t do to make a bad impression on Spectra if she’s one of Plasmius’ friends. “Danny is fine. Nice to meet you.”

“How polite!” Spectra beams, and Danny notices that her teeth are all sharp. She pats his shoulder, and this time the lightning is visible as it snakes across his chest and up her arm. She doesn’t seem too bothered, as she continues, “So unusual to meet a polite teenager, you know. They’re all so _self-centered_ these days.”

Plasmius narrows his eyes at Spectra, tracking the electricity as it moves, “Yes, yes, well, he’s a boy not a snack, and we really must be getting on. If you don’t mind?”

Danny shrugs out from under Spectra, again, so that Plasmius can fly between them. He follows him towards the door, confused. They’d just gotten here, after all. It’s not fair that Spectra would run them off, especially because it’s Plasmius’ lair to begin with. Danny makes to say something, brow furrowed, but Plasmius steers him through the door.

“Well come on, then, you can’t stay,” he hears Plasmius call back before phasing all the way through. He moves Danny well out of range before the shadow ghost follows them out.

“So rude,” Spectra huffs.

“You’re one to talk,” Danny’s mouth says, before his brain can stop it.

Spectra laughs, high and haughty, like she’s just won something. Danny continues to be confused.

“Until next time,” Plasmius ushers Danny away, flying back in the direction of the Portal at a much faster rate than they’d set the first time. Once they’re far enough away, Plasmius says, “You need to siphon off some of your excess energy, Daniel. You’re far too easy to track with as much power as you have stored now.”

Danny feels like maybe Spectra took a good chunk of that power, somehow. The sparks are back under his skin, instead of crawling all over the outside of him. He shivers.

They reach the empty space surrounding the Portal, and Plasmius stops short - he’s moving, and then he isn’t. Danny does a forward tumble when he tries to catch himself, rolling twice before turning back to face him.

“The one good thing about that power is that it should be very easy for you to feel your core. Can you?” Plasmius calls a handful of fire, which wisps hot pink in the palm of his hand.

Danny takes a breath and nods, shakily.

He closes his eyes and thinks carefully. His core is where his power comes from, he knows, but he doesn’t usually have to think about it. Well, not since the very beginning, but he wasn’t really planning things so much as wishing very hard for them to happen. Ectoblasts seem to show up when he needs them, like an extension of fight-or-flight reflexes. Invisibility, flight, phasing through things - those feel like instincts. He’s not sure, exactly, where to look, and the current in his limbs is distracting.

Or. Perhaps.

Danny focuses on the current. And he remembers, suddenly, what had driven him into that storm to begin with - a want so deep and strong that he hadn’t even considered denying it.

He finds his core. It’s hot and sharp and weightless and light, at his center. More intense than a heartbeat. It’s like finding his own battery, Danny thinks, and it’s almost sour in his mouth. He can feel the sparks radiating off of it, traveling down to his fingers and toes and back up again - and Danny concentrates on holding it in his hands. He wants a little ball of electricity in the palm of his hand, like Plasmius’ fire.

He opens his eyes.

Danny is holding a crackling ball of electricity. It should be too bright to look at, but it doesn’t bother his eyes. It arcs between his hands and the rest of him, little bolts of lightning connecting.

“I got it!” Danny grins, looking to Plasmius.

The older ghost increases the fire in his hand to an inferno and hurls it into the aether with a level of grace Danny hopes to one day attain and says, “Throw it, as hard as you can and with everything you have.”

The fireball vanishes in the distance, and Danny takes aim.

Lightning strikes.

He releases the lightning with a shout. It branches, splitting into two bolts that vanish into the mists of the Zone. It feels great - a release of anxious energy that he’d been carrying since early this morning that’s almost as fantastic as his time in the thundercloud.

Plasmius keeps him there, calling energy and throwing lightning with varying levels of intensity, for what feels like forever. He matches every lightning strike with his own fiery blasts. When Danny finally manages to throw a bolt of lightning without first having to call it into his hand, the older ghost declares them done for the night.

“I believe that’s quite enough, my boy,” he says. “Your stamina will improve with experience, but you’ve got a good bit in you already. I’m certainly interested to see how the rest of your abilities develop.”

Danny is exhausted, but in a satisfying way. Like he’d get after a track meet - his core feels a little like a well-used muscle and his palms burn from the electricity, but the uncontrollable sparks that had been skittering across his body since he entered the Zone are gone.

He scrubs his hands through his hair, glad to find it free of static, and says, “Yeah, me too! Oh - _wait_ , so you said it depends on your obsession, too, right? Which mine is… space? I think? Is that gonna, like, ruin my regular social life? I don’t want to be the Box Ghost of NASA facts, Plasmius.”

Plasmius laughs at him, “Ha! No, your human half will temper it some - well, I think so. You’ll be fine, now that you’re aware. What do you say same time next week, perhaps? You know where to find me now if you need anything before, of course. And I you.”

“Sure,” says Danny, relieved. “I’ll see you then?”

Plasmius sweeps a shallow bow and says, “Until next time, Daniel.”

Danny waves goodbye to his mentor, and heads home through the Portal.

Danny is upstairs, asleep with Sam and Tucker as they try to eke out the last hours of the night, when the Portal opens on an empty lab. No one is there to see the shadows that creep out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this one a couple of (so many) times, but hopefully any weirdness is straightened out as we go forward.
> 
> next chapter, we get a little perspective


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little outside perspective.
> 
> Life has been hectic, but I'm still kicking! Chapters may continue to be monthly for a bit, but I still intend to write this fic.

Jazz is having a great day, despite the fact that no one else seems to be on the same page.

Danny especially. He was fine over the weekend, but on Monday there had been another ghost sighting at Casper High and he’d been down ever since. She’s tried telling him that ghosts aren’t real, because they _aren’t_ , but it’s hard to get past the influence that their parents have had on him. She resolves to keep trying. It will be better for Danny in the end.

It’s not just him, though. This Spirit Week on the whole has been unusually dreary, and Jazz is doing her best to not let it get to her. She’s spent a lot of time working on this; plus, as the current lead for Valedictorian she has to give a speech at the pep rally on Friday. The new counselor, Penelope Spencer, says that the point of the events is to cheer everyone up anyway, and Jazz shouldn’t worry too much about it.

Jazz likes Ms. Spencer well enough that she’s pushed Danny to go see her a couple of times, although when she asks how he’s liked their sessions he just glares at her. He’d had one this morning, so Jazz is on the way to his lunch table to ask again when the fight breaks out.

Between the giant glowing green hornet and the flying teenager with white hair.

The ghost fight, between real ghosts.

Jazz freezes, and screams.

The hornet whirls and flies straight for her, and it sounds like it might be laughing but there’s blood rushing in her ears and she can’t hear it - and the ghost kid grabs it by the legs and throws it towards the lunch tables outside, away from her, and maybe he’s yelling something at her, too, but she still can’t hear over the rush and then he’s gone. And she can finally hear the screaming, coming from outside.

Jazz puts her reeling worldview in a box and stores it neatly in the back of her brain to deal with later, because _her brother is outside_. Danny is outside and there are _ghosts_ out there and Danny is _terrified_ of ghosts and she has to _find him_.

She runs into the chaos, towards the back of the building where Danny and his friends usually eat. She finds Sam and Tucker, running towards the building as one of the ghosts throws the other one through a table. Jazz catches Sam’s arm and says, “Where’s Danny?”

And Sam says, “He - uh - I think he was running ahead of us, he might be inside already.” And then she shakes Jazz off and follows Tucker inside, away from the chaos.

But Jazz was just in that doorway, she would’ve seen Danny and she didn’t, so he must be out here. The hornet changes shape, becoming a giant snake that coils around the ghost kid. The ghost kid lights up with electricity, and the snake goes ramrod straight and the ghost kid is free now.

“DANNY!” Jazz yells. The yard is almost empty, and she still can’t see him. The ghost kid spins to look at her, but she ignores him. The snake is a rhino now, and it rams him from behind, sending him careening into the trees not too far from Jazz.

There’s a flash of light, and Jazz wonders briefly if ghosts can die again. Her feet take her towards the trees before she can really think about why. She doesn’t make it all the way into the thicket before she sees Danny. He’s facing away from her, towards the big shape-shifting ghost, and her call to him dies in her throat when the white rings appear around his middle. She watches, silently and with wide eyes, as Danny becomes the ghost kid.

Oh shit, her brother is _dead_.

The fight ends, but Jazz barely notices. Her ears are rushing again. She’s maybe having a panic attack, but she’s almost back inside the school. Was that real? She was sitting on the couch next to Danny last night watching TV. He hadn’t felt like a corpse, then. Jazz is still standing stock-still just outside of the cafeteria doors when her friends find her. She sees Spike first, and comes a little more to her senses when he waves to someone just out of view, and then Naomi is there, and they move inside and help her breathe until she’s stopped panicking enough to just cry.

When Danny - black hair, NASA hoodie, alive - finds them, they’re still in the cafeteria, sat on the floor while Jazz sniffles into the juice Spike had found for her.

“What happened?” Danny asks, sliding to the floor next to her as fresh tears gather.

She notes his heartbeat when she throws her arms around his neck. Maybe she was wrong about what she saw, but all the same she answers, “Saw a ghost.”

Danny pats her reassuringly on the head (and it’s still super weird that he’s gotten so tall) and then he rests his chin on her hair and says, “Dad’s gonna love this.”

The ensuing petty sibling argument lasts the rest of the day and goes a long way to raising Jazz’s spirits.

Later, once they’re home and the ennui that has been plaguing Danny all week settles back in, Jazz finds Danny in the living room. He’s rolling his pencil back and forth across the coffee table instead of working on homework.

Jazz sits next to him on the couch, “You know you can talk to me about things, right Danny?”

“Thought that’s why you wanted me to see Penelope,” he frowns.

“Well, you just seemed down. I thought maybe she’d help, you know?” Jazz keeps her voice low. Their parents are in the kitchen making dinner loudly enough that she’s not worried about being overheard, but she knows Danny will appreciate the discretion. “And I may not be a licensed psychologist yet, but I am your big sister, so you can tell me whatever.”

Danny stops his pencil rolling to look at her with a soft, tired smile. “Thanks, Jazz.”

“No problem,” she bumps shoulders with him, reminding herself again that Danny is fine. Maybe he’s also a ghost, but right now he’s alive. And he’ll tell her about how it all works when he needs to, she figures. Still, a little needling never hurt. “I do mean it though - you can tell me anything. Like, my whole worldview got shattered earlier, I’ll probably believe whatever you tell me right now.”

Jazz is so, so sure that Danny is about to tell her what’s going on, but then Dad barrels out of the kitchen and announces that dinner is ready, hey kids whatcha talking about, and Jazz sees the panic cross Danny’s face before he blurts, “Jazz saw a ghost today!”

She does her best to forgive him for his panicked redirect as she spends dinner reliving her harrowing lunch hour. They’re stuck at the table for a while after as well, listening to Mom and Dad talk about their new invention the Fenton Peeler.

It seems helpful enough that Jazz sneaks it to school with her the next day - and she ends up being very glad for it, when ghost-Danny shoves her through (through!) the wall behind the podium in the gym as the spirit sparklers set off an explosion that should probably have killed her. When Ms. Spencer and her assistant come in through the same wall, Jazz connects a lot of dots in very little time. Danny steps between her and them, and when they start firing ectoplasm around she sneaks out the door and runs for her locker. She returns with the Peeler, aims it at Ms. Spencer before she can think twice about it, and pulls the trigger.

Jazz is glad Danny was out of the way, because the Peeler blasts Ms. Spencer’s skin off in ribbons, revealing a shadowy creature with needle-sharp teeth whose screeching cry causes the assistant - huge and green, now - to let go of Danny in order to try and help her. The second of distraction is all Danny needs to pull out a Fenton Thermos and suck the two of them inside.

Jazz cheers. She remembers that Danny doesn’t know that she knows that this is him in time to keep herself from running in to congratulate him, and instead she says, “So, um, we’re even now, right? On saving each other?”

“Oh,” says Danny. His voice echoes oddly in this form, and he hardly even sounds like himself. “Sure, yeah.”

Then he turns invisible, and Jazz is on her own.

———

Daniel was right about the lights in the bottom of the Zone. It had taken them another training session, but they’d managed to map the lights below Vlad’s lair onto the astrolabe. Once Daniel was back on his side of the Portal, Vlad had found the second reference point.

He had made it quite clear that he intended to go to the Library without Daniel, though thankfully the boy hadn’t been too disappointed at the prospect. Vlad had simply suggested that the trip may take longer than they could plan for, and Daniel had agreed it was best not to tag along. Vlad had mainly just been trying to get rid of him, but the journey did end up being quite the undertaking.

Vlad has been flying for what he thinks is almost three days when he finally spots it in the distance, and it takes another forty minutes to actually get to the Library itself.

It’s huge. The facade is massive, with towering columned archways stacked in tiers. Each archway seemed to have a different architectural style, as though they led to different eras. Around the sides Vlad could see yet more diverse structures, blended into one another as though the Library were a relatively cube-shaped chimera of stone and wood. A microcosm of the way the Zone blends time and space.

Vlad enters the centermost doorway, as it is the only one standing slightly open, and finds himself at what appears to be a perfectly normal front desk in a small foyer. The desk is dark purple wood, most likely built within the Zone, and behind it sits a small blue monk in classic plain brown robes. He puts his book away and speaks as Vlad lands, but Vlad can’t understand him.

“Hello,” Vlad greets.

The monk _hms_ and tries again, “What brings ye to the Library?”

“I’m looking for a map,” Vlad answers, purposefully vague.

The monk nods, and turns to the wall of small drawers behind him. He opens one drawer, selects one key on a blue string, and pulls a paper and quill from beneath the desk. He passes the quill to Vlad, “Sign in - name and intent. Stay as long as ye like, but nothing leaves the library. There’s an events schedule posted in the main hall. If ye get lost, give a shout. Someone will find ye.”

He scrawls _Vlad Plasmius_ and _cartographic research_ onto the next blank line on the page. The monk accepts it, and passes him the key.

“Maps are towards the bottom,” the monk says. Then he puts the paper and quill back under the desk and returns to his reading. Vlad assumes that that means they’re done, and phases further into the library.

It’s bigger, on the inside. The walls go on for what could be hundreds of feet both above him, and at least five stories down from where he currently floats. They are also almost entirely covered in bookshelves. Here and there, he can see doors set into the walls, beyond which he assumes there are still more books. Platforms float every couple of stories, with shelves of their own as well as desks and tables and chairs. The largest of these platforms is directly across from the entrance, and has a series of large boards and comfortable couches, as well as another official-looking desk.

There are ghosts all over the place, as well, despite the lonely flight out. Most of them seem to be librarians of some kind - more monks of varying denominations and cultures, some Greek-looking fellows, a woman Vlad could swear he saw in the library at his college. There’s even a worm-like ghost long enough to span two or three stories at once and covered most of the way in arms, sorting volumes back onto the shelves several at a time with truly baffling precision.

Vlad must look lost, because one of the other ghosts floats up to him and asks, “Can I help you find something?”

“I’m looking for the maps,” Vlad answers. “Preferably historical maps of the Zone.”

“Oh sure,” she turns, gesturing for him to follow. She has a sort of nineteen-seventies vibe. He follows her down and towards the far left corner, where she ushers him through a doorway. “This is the Map Room. Enjoy!”

Vlad finds himself alone. The walls are lined with waffle shelves, each clearly labeled with a location and date. The center of the room has a large oak table, with some loose paper and pens marked as free for public use. Vlad can see a hallway, also lined with map shelves, and beyond it another identical room.

He loses count of how many rooms he goes through before he finds the map he’s looking for with the records of the ancient Zone. He spreads it out on the table, confirms that it has the location of the Skeleton Key (again in reference to the not-stars in the darkness below), and takes several photos with his cell phone - without the flash, of course, because he’s not a monster.

———

Star stands back from her setup in the living room and surveys her work. She’s got all of her controllers for both of her game systems fully charged and set up. There’s a bag of tortilla chips, and more snacks and some sodas (as a treat!) in the kitchen. She’s cleared most of the pillows off of the couch and has dragged her fluffy butterfly chairs down from upstairs. All that’s missing is to set out the games, and her birthday party is good to go. She’s setting up the PS2 for it when her parents leave for the evening. They’re going out to dinner and a movie, and won’t be home until late, specifically so that Star can have the house to herself.

It’s almost October, so she’s settled on horror games. She finds the first two easily enough, in the drawer under the PlayStation. The third one she has to track down; she finds it in her bag, still, where she’d left it after buying it from the Fentons’ garage sale earlier in the afternoon.

Star had stopped by to invite Danny and his friends to her birthday party. She still kind of felt bad about homecoming, and she’d been friends with Danny when they were kids. He really was a nice guy, Star thought. Paulina and Dash were just judgy about his family - which, fair, Danny’s family is nuts. But they’d been having a garage sale when she got there, so she sifted through the stuff while she talked to Danny. The game had a blank case, with a post-it note stuck under the plastic sleeve that said “Polybius.” When she asked what it was, Danny had shrugged and suggested that it might be one of his dad’s old horror games. She’d bought it on principle, and gotten Danny’s phone number so she could send him her address.

The first person to arrive is of course Paulina. She greets Star with a hug and a happy birthday and asks, “You didn’t really invite _Danny Fenton_ and company to your birthday, did you?”

“Yes,” Star rolls her eyes and takes Paulina’s overnight bag from her. “He’s nice.”

“Ugh, maybe, but his friends are weird,” she grouses.

Star gets Paulina to promise to be on her best behavior. Valerie and Mia show up next, and then Kwan arrives with the news that Dash isn’t coming because he heard that Danny would be there. Star will have to deal with that on Monday, but for the moment she’s just relieved.

Danny shows up with Sam and Tucker in tow, just a few minutes late. He looks happier to be here than they do, but Star politely pretends not to notice. Sam brought vegan cookies, which she declares with the air of distaste that evaporates when Star sets them next to the veggie plate and adds a little note to differentiate them from the other party cookies. With the group finally complete, they settle in the living room to take turns playing _Fatal Frame_.

At some point Paulina wanders off for snacks, and comes back to ask Sam about the ingredients of the vegan cookies. They turn out to be gluten free, too, and Paulina spends some time between jump scares asking Sam about other vegan alternatives to foods she’s been avoiding to eat healthier. When they switch to playing _The Evil Within_ it turns out that Danny and Tucker have been trying to play the all-dark mode, so they turn out all of the lights and Star draws the curtains and they huddle together to watch until the spotlight lady scares Valerie so badly that she screams and accidentally kicks Kwan and they decide to turn the lights back on and try the new game.

When Star passes it to Tucker to put into the console, he says, “Oh, weird. I thought this was a myth.”

No one asks him about that, but Star thinks maybe she should have, ten minutes later when she has her back pressed against the kitchen counter as they watch the staticky ghost creature climb out of her TV.

It has a sort of old-fashioned robot face, and wild white hair, and a PS2 body made of TV static with long, long arms that end in claws. It speaks with the grainy voice of a wacky mad scientist character and declares, “I am Technus, master of all technology! Give me your electronics, children!”

The power goes out and the party guests scatter. Star scoots backwards into the kitchen with a speed she didn’t know she was capable of - she sees Sam pull Paulina into the hall on the other side, but the rest of them are gone before she can spot them. She can’t seem to get her body to hide, too focused on what the ghost is going to do in her house. It watches them go without much reaction, and if it can see Star in the dark kitchen it pays her no mind.

Instead, it starts grabbing all of the small electronics they’d left behind in the living room. Or, actually. It’s absorbing them. It feeds the controllers into its body, and then the TV remotes, and then the PlayStation, and a couple of cell phones people had moved too quickly to take. It turns towards the TV, considering, but is interrupted by the arrival of a second ghost.

The second ghost is a teenager, about the same age as the group she’d just been having a party with. She knows he’s a ghost because he’s floating, and he came in through the ceiling, he has bright white hair, and he’s glowing bright enough to bathe the room in cold light. If it wasn’t for all of those completely outrageous things, Star thinks he’d be a pretty bland kid. A plain black hoodie, jeans. He has a soup thermos clipped to the back of his pants, for some reason.

“Hey,” the soup ghost addresses the monster. It stops its inspection of the television. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What do _you_ think _you’re_ doing?!” Star is not sure what possessed her to speak. The ghosts teen glances back at her, eyebrows raised. “Who even are you?”

“I’m Phantom,” he says, voice slightly reverberated. “I came to help.”

“Oh, good,” says Technus, brightly. “Give me all of your electronics, child!”

Star spots Sam and Paulina, peeking over the couch. Sam throws her cell phone across the room, and it smacks into the far wall - Technus dives for it immediately and when he does Phantom shoves him through the wall and outside. There is quiet, and then a large crash and indistinguishable yelling. Star’s feet finally unfreeze, and she darts for the front door to see what the ghosts are doing outside - she’d missed the fight at school on Thursday but she wasn’t about to miss the one happening in front of her house.

Thankfully, her phone was still in her back pocket. Paulina and Sam join her on the front stoop as she shakily starts to video.

She actually managed to get the staticky ghost absorbing her neighbors’ cars to make mecha armor on camera, but it became harder to keep up with the fight as Phantom tossed volley after volley of green energy at mecha-Technus. He drops some of the tires, but once he figures out that they’re removable they become new projectiles, and he slings them at Phantom. The first one passes through him harmlessly, but the second one hits, throwing one of those energy shots up higher than intended.

It hits Technus square in the funky robotic face. Technus’ body blinks red all over, once.

The teens all stop for a second, Phantom included.

Then Phantom rockets up into the air, headed straight for the same spot. Technus tries to hit him with one of his car arms, but Phantom phases right through it. He must become solid again quickly though, because the punch he delivers to Technus’ face causes another red blink. Phantom goes for a spin kick to follow the punch, but the second car arm does connect, and the mecha ghost sends him hurtling back towards the street.

He catches himself in midair, though, and Star zooms the camera in on him as what looks like electricity sparks down his arms. Then Phantom draws both arms back and thrusts them forward and shoots lightning. The strike hits Technus right in the face, and he blinks red a third time.

This time, though, the red blink is followed by an outward explosion of static that deposits the absorbed cars - and controllers, and phones - back onto the street with a great deal of force. Left behind is a green-skinned humanoid figure, with the same crazy hair and robotic mask Technus had started off with.

“Ha!” says the ghost, and the voice confirms that this is still Technus. “You think you’ve defeated m—”

There’s a bright light from the direction of Phantom, then, that pulls Technus towards the other ghost and into the soup thermos. Star wonders, wildly, if Phantom is going to eat the soup later.

Phantom turns to look at the group on the stoop, and waves to the camera. He says, “Sorry!” and then blips out of visibility.

“Oh my god,” says Sam.

“He was kind of hot,” says Paulina.

Star stops the video.

They find Kwan back in the living room, looking for his phone. Star lets him know as gently as she can that it’s probably a pavement pancake outside somewhere. Valerie, Mia, and Tucker were all upstairs, watching the fight through the front windows. Valerie is especially excited that Star got it all on video.

Danny is found, with some searching, in the tub of the downstairs bathroom, shaking like a leaf.

Her house smells like ozone for hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm also coffeecakecafe on tumblr and insta and ko-fi, if you ever want to come chat!
> 
> Next chapter continues the different perspectives as Casper High and Amity Park start getting used to all the spooks.

**Author's Note:**

> [lightning & comets on tumblr](https://bit.ly/37PvRM5)


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